Article:		Open Source Licenses Are Not All the Same
Subject:		Open Licenses
Date:		2004-11-19 06:36:02
From:		msporleder
Response to: Open Licenses
>>A "preexisting" original author using an open source >>"standard form" license is attempting to use his >>lawful monopoly in authorizing derivative works of >>his "preexisting" original work to control the >>exclusive rights granted to all subsequent >>offerees' derivative modifications to that >>"preexisting" work. The Copyright Act states: I think that's a pretty strong assumption. I don't see any of your examples classifying open source software authors as monopolies. In fact, I think software has always been distributed under restrictive, creative, and otherwise weird terms. It's the right the owner of a creative work to distribute it as he pleaases. It is, after all, his property. I think any court would agree that if you can change $10/end-user*5 (or whatever other obsurd licensing exists), then you can give your creative works away for free, demanding only a payment of intellectual property and credit to the original author (GPL vs BSD) when the end-user chooses to use it by modifying and redistributing it.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Open Licenses
  2004-11-24 09:34:00  brianutterback [Reply | View]
  
  
  all copyright holders are monopolies. they have a monopolistic as the copyright holder to grant those copyrights to those they choose and under the terms they choose. The point in this discussion is that new rights cannot be created that have not been previously granted by the law, except via contract. The kicker here is that the courts appear to maintain that a copyright license is not a genuine contract because a contract must be between limited parties and not just "the public". Therefore a license cannot place further restrictions than those granted by law.
• Ok, so basically
  2004-12-15 11:16:05  joodie [Reply | View]
  
  
  You mean to say, that according to the US copyright law any software licence that allows the "general public" to use it (say, download it from a website), cannot be copyrighted?